Will Real Madrid try to sign Manchester United’s David de Gea again before the transfer deadline?

David de Gea almost joined Real Madrid last summer (Picture: Getty Images)

Real Madrid have just one week to complete any transfer deals thanks to the ban handed to them by Fifa.

A number of names have been mentioned as potential targets over the course of the last few days.

Robert Lewandowski, Sergio Aguero and others are apparently being tracked and Florentino Perez has a €250m bounty to attract another round of ‘Galacticos.’

The timing of the announcement by Fifawill hit Los Blancos hard, however. Any deal at the highest levels take time to construct, not a week or two. Even with a decent lead-in time, some deals never quite make it over the line.

Take David de Gea’s for instance.

The deal for the Spanish number one to Real Madrid was all but agreed. After initial reluctance, Keylor Navas had agreed to leave Real and join Manchester United with De Gea coming the other way.

However an 11th hour hitch with a fax machine meant that the deal never concluded leaving both players bruised at best.

Keylor Navas was meant to go the other way (Picture: Getty Images)

De Gea’s defiant signing of a new contract with the Red Devils was his response at trying to put the whole sorry episode behind him. Navas for his part, went on to produce some of the best goalkeeping seen by a Real custodian in the opening dozen fixtures of the season.

Both stoppers utterly professional in the way in which they’d dealt with matters, yet there remains a niggling doubt that we haven’t heard the last of it.

Perez is on record saying how much he admires De Gea and it’s no real secret that the United number one would love to return home.

The question is whether there is enough time to get everyone back around the table to hammer out the finer points.

There’s no doubt Real will try their utmost to do so because there simply has to be some good news for Perez to take to his public before the transfer door is firmly closed.

De Gea may well take some persuading given his feelings over the way the matter was handled first time round, but if he’s convinced that Real mean business this time his heart will rule his head all over again.

What could possibly go wrong?

The structure of the deal is in place and essentially agreed from before. Perhaps one or two minor revisions but nothing major.

As long as Los Blancos have ensured that their fax machine is in full working order, job done.